At 5pm on a Friday night Alex Lilburn switches off his computer and jumps in the car.
Five minutes later he is settled down on Gibbs Beach, a peaceful palm tree lined stretch of white sand and glittering sea.
It is a world away – literally – from his old life living in a one bedroom flat in Stratford and heading out to the pub post work.
During the pandemic Alex decided to shake things up by taking advantage of Barbados’s Welcome Stamp, a 12 month visa for foreign visitors.
“When the world went into lockdown there was this sense of complete uncertainty,” said Alex, 33.
“It was tough being in a little boxy London apartment, and all of the things that make London appealing were suddenly no longer available.”
Then Alex read an article about remote working and thought why not?
He had been mostly working from home, as an AI software designer, even before Covid-19 and the idea of swapping East Village, the former athletes village at Stratford, for a tropical paradise seemed like a very good trade off.
After discussing the idea with friends (enthusiastic), family (concerned), and boss (agreeable) he decided to go for it, choosing Barbados partly for its Caribbean climate and partly because the Welcome Visa was easy to apply for.
“It is literally a one page web form, it took half an hour, and I heard back within two or three days,” he said.
On a grey and rainy day in January 2021 Alex’s dad drove him to the airport and he flew to Barbados.
He had to spend three days quarantining in a hotel, and then began Airbnb hopping around the island to get to know the place.
After six months he decided he was ready to settle down in Warrens, a modern town close to the island’s west coast. His three bedroom house costs circa £1,350 a month, about the same as he was paying for his Stratford flat.
Alex finds it easy to juggle the five hour time difference — his colleagues are happy to book meetings during Barbadian working hours — and his down time is spent golfing, snorkelling and scuba diving, or just hanging out on the beach.
“It is like being on a holiday that starts at 5pm every Friday,” he said.
Moving continents, alone, could be quite lonely and Alex has had to come out of his comfort zone in order to make new friends. “There are a lot of people in a similar situation, so they are very open to meeting up and making plans,” he said.
“You can go to a beach bar by yourself and just start a conversation. Once you start doing it you realise it isn’t that bad.”
